Books about Venkatesh from Amazon.com

First introduced in Freakonomics, here is the full story of Sudhir Venkatesh, the sociology grad student who infiltrated one of Chicago's most notorious gangs

The story of the young sociologist who studied a Chicago crack-dealing gang from the inside captured the world's attention when it was first described in Freakonomics. Gang Leader for a Day is the fascinating full story of how Sudhir Venkatesh managed to gain entrŽe into the gang, what he learned, and how his method revolutionized the academic establishment.

When Venkatesh walked into an abandoned building in one of Chicago's most notorious housing projects, he was looking for people to take a multiple-choice survey on urban poverty. A first-year grad student hoping to impress his professors with his boldness, he never imagined that as a result of the assignment he would befriend a gang leader named JT and spend the better part of a decade inside the projects under JT's protection, documenting what he saw there.

Over the next seven years, Venkatesh got to know the neighborhood dealers, crackheads, squatters, prostitutes, pimps, activists, cops, organizers, and officials. From his privileged position of unprecedented access, he observed JT and the rest of the gang as they operated their crack-selling business, conducted PR within their community, and rose up or fell within the ranks of the gang's complex organizational structure.

In Hollywood-speak, Gang Leader for a Day is The Wire meets Harvard University. It's a brazen, page turning, and fundamentally honest view into the morally ambiguous, highly intricate, often corrupt struggle to survive in what is tantamount to an urban war zone. It is also the story of a complicated friendship between Sudhir and JT-two young and ambitious men a universe apart..
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Listen to a short interview with Sudhir Venkatesh
Host: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane

In this revelatory book, Sudhir Venkatesh takes us into Maquis Park, a poor black neighborhood on Chicago's Southside, to explore the desperate, dangerous, and remarkable ways in which a community survives. We find there an entire world of unregulated, unreported, and untaxed work, a system of living off the books that is daily life in the ghetto. From women who clean houses and prepare lunches for the local hospital to small-scale entrepreneurs like the mechanic who works in an alley; from the preacher who provides mediation services to the salon owner who rents her store out for gambling parties; and from street vendors hawking socks and incense to the drug dealing and extortion of the local gang, we come to see how these activities form the backbone of the ghetto economy.

What emerges are the innumerable ways that these men and women, immersed in their shadowy economic pursuits, are connected to and reliant upon one another. The underground economy, as Venkatesh's subtle storytelling reveals, functions as an intricate web, and in the strength of its strands lie the fates of many Maquis Park residents. The result is a dramatic narrative of individuals at work, and a rich portrait of a community. But while excavating the efforts of men and women to generate a basic livelihood for themselves and their families, Off the Books offers a devastating critique of the entrenched poverty that we so often ignore in America, and reveals how the underground economy is an inevitable response to the ghetto's appalling isolation from the rest of the country.

(20060904).
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High-rise public housing developments were signature features of the post–World War II city. A hopeful experiment in providing temporary, inexpensive housing for all Americans, the "projects" soon became synonymous with the black urban poor, with isolation and overcrowding, with drugs, gang violence, and neglect. As the wrecking ball brings down some of these concrete monoliths, Sudhir Venkatesh seeks to reexamine public housing from the inside out, and to salvage its troubled legacy. Based on nearly a decade of fieldwork in Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes, American Project is the first comprehensive story of daily life in an American public housing complex. Venkatesh draws on his relationships with tenants, gang members, police officers, and local organizations to offer an intimate portrait of an inner-city community that journalists and the public have only viewed from a distance. Challenging the conventional notion of public housing as a failure, this startling book re-creates tenants' thirty-year effort to build a safe and secure neighborhood: their political battles for services from an indifferent city bureaucracy, their daily confrontation with entrenched poverty, their painful decisions about whether to work with or against the street gangs whose drug dealing both sustained and imperiled their lives. American Project explores the fundamental question of what makes a community viable. In his chronicle of tenants' political and personal struggles to create a decent place to live, Venkatesh brings us to the heart of the matter. (20010114).
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Designed to be widely accessible without sacrificing depth, Building Community Capacity provides a theoretically informed, systematic exploration of this fundamental issue. The authors combine a wealth of practical experience working with community-based initiatives with a deep theoretical understanding of the problems facing communities today to produce a clear definition of the concept of community capacity and a pointed review of strategies intended to foster it. Clearly and in detail, providing a systematic framework for comprehensive thinking about a cluster of related activities, they explore the choices and issues that must be confronted by all who share a practical interest in strengthening poor neighborhoods.

Building Community Capacity draws widely on both academic and applied research. It uses existing knowledge as a basis for a synthetic analysis of substantial primary source material, including key-informant interviews with participants in community-building initiatives; data derived from in-depth implementation studies of certain core cases; and documentary and interview data from additional initiatives and organizations that are engaged in community capacity-building efforts. Data from the core cases consist of information and experience gathered in the documentation and evaluation of three major initiatives, allowing the detailed exploration to be sensitive to the nuances of approach, process, and context that inform the implementation of these efforts and condition their effects.

Taken together, the cases represent a cross-section of the field of community-capacity building efforts, illustrating the range of strategies, contexts, actors, and implementation issues that have been encountered across a spectrum of community capacity building efforts. To ensure that the lessons to be drawn from in-depth analysis are broadly representative, the authors also develop a list of numerous other community-based initiatives, which they use to contextualize, illustrate, draw out, refine, confirm, and challenge what they see in the core cases..
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In a business environment where companies are outsourcing their software development projects to India and other offshore centres, it becomes critical to make sure that the offshore service providers are managing the projects properly to reduce the risk of failure. Recent statistics show that overall, outsourced software development projects may increase overall risk; however, many techniques exist to reduce this risk and improve overall project performance. Written by a senior manager within one of the large Indian outsourcing firms, "Managing Offshore Development Projects: An Agile Approach" shows how agile management methods can be used to better manage and control these offshore projects. With examples from many real-world projects, the book presents a unique look at how to manage agile projects in an outsourced environment. Full of charts, graphs, and metrics, this book is an invaluable resource that should be on the shelf of every manager considering using and offshore partner on his or her next project..
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Popular Sanskrit prayers from the Vedas & Upanishads!
Devanagiri Script, Transcription and English Translations!
English commentary offers reflections on how each prayer applies to daily life.

A must have for every family!
Perfect gift for Grads!
Safe gift for friends or colleagues!

Inside:
Gayatri Mantra: Enlightenment
Ganesha Vandana: Tribute to Ganesha
Krishna Vandana: Tribute to Krishna
Prayers to Devi: The Feminine Divine
Vande Mataram: Glorious Mother
and many more.
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The management of critically ill patients not only involves a thorough daily review of investigations and monitoring. A detailed knowledge and understanding of data is crucial in the day-to-day management of patients in intensive care. With over 100 data sets composed of a brief history, relevant clinical findings, investigation and monitoring results, Venkatesh provides a source of real clinical data, with questions and answers, enabling you to tet and develop your interpretation skills.

• Answers with explanations follow each question, providing instant access to the correct interpretation and additional information to enhance the readers understanding.
  
• Important review for anesthesia and critical care personnel who need to know this information for practice or for exams.

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Price: $39.73 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Surgical management of aortic pathologies has changed dramatically, and this essential book fills the void with up-to-date comprehensive information on the topic.

Written by physicians at the Arizona Heart Institute, which pioneered the use of thoracic endoluminal grafts, Endovascular and Hybrid Management of the Thoracic Aorta presents clinical scenarios as well as controversies in this fascinating and rapidly developing field.

Discussing the etiology, diagnostic tools and management and treatment of specific pathologies of the aorta, this book is ideal for cardiovascular and vascular surgeons from all over the world. It is also of interest to residents in vascular and cardiothoracic surgery who have an interest in thoracic aortic disease management and want to be at the forefront of endovascular technology..
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The Latest Techniques of Ultra-Precise Manufacturing for Creating Mechanical, Electronic, and Optical Products

Precision Engineering gives expert guidance on the application of manufacturing to micro and nano levels, using state-of-the-art miniaturization technology. The book fully explores these new in-demand techniques, providing clear explanations of precision engineering fundamentals, the theory and design of precision machines, and the mechanics of ultra-precise machining.

Filled with over 200 skills-building illustrations, this vital engineering resource examines topics ranging from atomic bit processes for manufacturing and atomic force…to scanning and electronic and optical microscopy. You will find timely information on the tool materials for precision machining…the mechanics of materials cutting…advances in precision grinding…ultra-precision machine elements…rolling element, hydrodynamic, and hydrostatic bearings…gas lubricated bearings… microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)…and much more. Presenting practical know-how on everything required to create actual products, Precision Engineering features:

• A full account of tool materials for precision engineering
• The latest methods of precision grinding
• Detailed analysis of ultra-precise machine elements
• In-depth coverage of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)

Inside This Cutting-Edge Guide to Precision Engineering Methods

• Tool Materials for Precision Machining • Mechanics of Materials Cutting • Advances in Precision Grinding • Ultra-Precision Machine Elements • Rolling Element, Hydrodynamic, and Hydrostatic Bearings • Gas Lubricated Bearings • Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS).
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